Wright State University CORE Scholar
University Libraries' Staff Publications University Libraries
1-1-2013
Open Access Ebooks
Sue Polanka Wright State University - Main Campus, [email protected]
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Repository Citation Polanka, S. (2013). Open Access Ebooks. Online, 37, 70-73. https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/ul_pub/118
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University Libraries at CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in University Libraries' Staff Publications by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ebook buzz Sue Polanka
Open Access Ebooks
ibraries, faculty, and researchers around the world celebrated Open L Access Week from Oct. 22 to 28, 2012. SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (www.arl.org/sparc). organizes the program, now in its sixth year. The celebration provides an international forum for shar ing the benefits of open access and inspiring wider participation in the open I discovered a access movement. I decided to participate in Open Access Week 2012 by highlighting various open wealth of resources access ebook platforms on my blog, No Shelf Required (http:/ /libraries. wright .edu/noshelfrequired). In my research, I discovered a wealth of resources for open for open access access books, many of them international in coverage with a variety of materials in multiple disciplines and languages. As I expected, once I began blogging about open access ebook collections, readers and followers sent me comments and sug books, many of gestions for additional sources of open access ebooks. The focus of this column is to introduce a variety of open access ebook collections and initiatives. I haven't them international included unglue.it, as I featured that in my May/June 2012 column. The collections and initiatives are listed with name, URL, and a brief summary in coverage with of the content and purpose of the site. If you have suggestions for additional open access ebook collections, send them my way.
a variety of OAPEN-OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING IN EUROPEAN NETWORKS OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) describes itself as "a materials in collaborative initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. multiple disciplines The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research by aggregating peer reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe" (www.oapen.org/home). and languages. The publishing platform offers the full text of titles in English, German, French, Italian, Latin, and a few other languages. Titles are submitted by a variety ofpub lishers, including Taylor & Francis Group, Palgrave Macmillan, Brill, Berg, and a long list of university presses, such as Hong Kong, Manchester, Firenze, Amsterdam, Aarhus, and Gtittingen. The advanced search screen supports Boolean operators and proximity search, along with the ability to filter by title, author, series title, subject, ISBN, and date.
70 onlinesearcher.net All books in the OAPEN Library can be found through WorldCat (OCLC platform, WorldCat.org, and WorldCat A unique feature for the Local). Libraries can also add the titles to their catalogs for additional discovery. OAPEN enables libraries and aggrega tors to use the metadata of all available titles in the OAPEN DOAB is formatted HTML for Library. Metadata is (or will be soon) available in ONIX, MARCXML, CSV, and XML. All metadata feeds are available embedding DOAB search boxes under a CCO 1.0 license, but OAPEN does request that users inform it upon use of the metadata. According to its newsletter, OAPEN had more than onto one's website, another great 400,000 downloads from August 2011 through July 2012. feature for discovery of content. DOAB-THE DIRECTORY OF OPEN ACCESS BOOKS The DOAB is a service of the OAPEN Foundation. As of November 2012, it provided the metadata for 1,226 peer reviewed, academic, open access ebooks from 33 publish ers. What makes the DOAB different from OAPEN is that it contains only the metadata of open access ebooks; the full and video) published by the CLACSO network. Language text must be downloaded by visiting the publisher sites skills are a must, as the search features and interface are in (links are provided in the directory). OAPEN, on the other Spanish, as well as much of the content. The main website hand, provides the metadata and full text of the titles within can be viewed in Spanish, English, and Portuguese. the publishing platform. The primary goal ofthe DOAB is to increase discoverabil SCIELO-SCIENTIFIC ELECTRONIC LIBRARY ONLINE ity of open access books. According to its website, it invites I first learned about SciELO Books (http:/ /books.scielo academic publishers to provide metadata, aggregators to .org) when I traveled to Brazil last fall for the Seminario integrate records into commercial services, and libraries to Brasileiro de Bibliotecas Academicas (SNBU) Conference. integrate the directory into online catalogs. The directory is This open ebook collection is less than a year old, launched in open to all publishers of academic, peer-reviewed books in March 2012. It is based on the successful SciELO open access open access. The DOAB also provides harvestable metadata journal collection (www.scielo.org/php/index.php?lang=en). in order to maximize dissemination, visibility, and impact. The website is available in English, Spanish, and Portu Libraries are welcome to add the metadata (which guese. There are approximately 300 books available from a includes licensing for each title) to their own catalogs to variety of university presses in Brazil. increase discovery. It can be downloaded through either OAl A news article in PublishNews Brazil written last June said Harvesting or by downloading a CSV file (http:/ /doabooks the following about the collection: "SciELO Books is a pilot .org I doab ?func=about&uiLanguage=en#metadata). A unique feature for the DOAB is formatted HTML for embedding DOAB search boxes onto one's website, another Books great feature for discovery of content. ScientifieE!ettronieLibruyOnline
CLACSO-CONSEJO LATINOAMERICANO DE Sc:IU.OIDobNortollbllol AdolpllolUfZ•E#IIOI>IOiogll CIENCIAS SOCIALES ,...... -Tlil&ni JAN [ FEB 2013 ONLINE SEARCHER 71 content will be available through a print-on-demand (POD) option, either at the book or chapter level or for individually Ubiquity Press is led by selected compilations. There will be a fee for the POD serv ice, and a percent ofthe income will be given to the authors. Authors also benefit with a quick publication process, researchers operating with a low- broad exposure via openness of content, and available DOis for books, chapters, and data. cost, rapid publishing model and SPRINGEROPEN SpringerOpen (www.springeropen.com) launched in 2010 as an open access journal program. It has a portfolio will publish within 1 month of of more than 100 open access journals in the STM areas. The program expanded to include books in August 2012, due to the growing demand for open access content. The final copy receipt. monographs, either complete monographs, edited vol umes, proceedings, or SpringerBriefs, receive the same peer review and editorial processes as fee-based mono graphs. Titles are available freely online, and print editions are available for a fee. Currently, seven titles are available in the collection, project for the presses of Unesp (in Sao Paulo), UFBA (in which will grow in years to come. Like the journals, Bahia) and Fiocruz (in Rio de Janeiro). There are currently books will be in the STM areas. They are accessible 250 titles online, with the aim to reach 500 by the end of the through SpringerLink and are also listed in the Directory year. And SciELO is looking to expand its partners" (http: of open access Books. Libraries who subscribe to I I publishnewsbrazil.com/201 2I 06 I brazilian-university Springer ebook collections automatically have access to presses-flirt-with-free-open-access-books). the open access book titles; SpringerOpen offers all jour The SciELO Books Portal contains academic titles nals and books through an Open Access Membership selected by a scientific committee following a peer-review Program. This program, with more than 400-plus partic process. Titles are either publisher collections or thematic ipating institutions, covers some or all of researchers' collections (scientific titles selected by publishers, institu publication costs when they submit to SpringerOpen. To tions, or specialist groups). They include research results, find out more about the open books program or to see if essays, and scientific studies. The digital versions of the your institution is a member of the OAMP, visit http: books are formatted in PDF and EPUB in order to be read I I springeropen.com/books. on the widest possible variety of ebook readers, tablets, smartphones, and browsers. In addition to the SciELO KNOWLEDGE UNLATCHED Books Portal, the books can be found via search engines. Knowledge Unlatched is not yet an ebook collection, but The organization plans to make the content available an initiative to bring open access ebooks to fruition though through other international distribution channels in the near future. ]u[ ubiquity press open s 72 onlinesearcher.net the collaborative efforts of authors, publishers, and libraries (www.knowledgeunlatched.org).lt is an idea from Frances Pinter, executive director ofKnowledge Unlatched. Pinter is concerned that the I first heard about this initiative 2 years ago at the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference where Pinter was speaking. The initiative has grown since then, taking on a new name, a 3-year pilot project to begin in 2013, and market for scholarly monographs hosting from Big Innovation Centre in London during its incubation stage. · Pinter is concerned that the market for scholarly mono graphs is inefficient and not working for any of the parties is inefficient and not working for involved. She is particularly concerned with monographs in the humanities and social sciences. She said in an email to me, "In the past the publication of scholarly books was funded by selling individual copies any of the parties involved. one by one as the way in which the publisher recovered the costs associated with selecting, peer reviewing, edit ing, typesetting, designing, marketing and selling. When thinking about a more efficient approach to paying for the publication of monographs it is useful to return to the question of who currently funds this activity. Most of the single upfront fee to cover the cost of publishing a book money that now pays for monographs comes from library on an open access license, and allowing publishers to budgets. The role of libraries as the only purchasers of retain the rights to sell physical copies or value-added monographs is closely linked to the difficulties that this ebook versions of titles, all of the stakeholders in the part of the publishing industry has faced over the last few monograph market could greatly benefit. years. However, it may also be a key advantage when it Pinter outlined the process as follows: comes to developing a sustainable strategy for facilitating • A Title Fee is paid to publishers to cover the fixed the large-scale publication of scholarly books on open costs of publishing the books. For each library the access licenses." contribution to the Title Fee is not more than a third To that end, the goal of Knowledge Unlatched is to cre of the price of the book (often less). The aggregated ate a global library consortium that will pay for the fixed amount, however, pays for the fixed costs incurred by costs of monographs to publishers in exchange for the the publisher. publisher agreeing to issue the text on an open content • In return, publishers make books available on an license (such as a creative commons license). By helping open access basis upon publication. This may be in libraries to form an international consortium that pays a HTML or any other format selected by the publisher. • Publishers will sell, where requested by member libraries, print copies or alternative ebook versions at ~Springer a discounted price. The discount will ensure that •"-U• members benefit from having contributed to the LOGIN origination costs and that they pay cumulatively less -- than nonmembers. • Publishers sell to the rest of the market on their own terms . LOOKING AHEAD Open Access Week 2012 was an exciting time for open -w fllr<*)prlo:!otlrGefmo.roy access ebooks. The momentum is likely to build as more 19&NIJ'I.3..6*l-:10381.ol ~ ...... o/lllljolng-:Z-J.,.,... • publishers choose open access and more initiatives appear. Even companies such as ProQuest's ebrary is making some titles open access (www.ebrary.com/corp/oa.jsp). I look Thls book. ll ID open ICUH boot, forward to seeing what Open Access Week 2013 will bring in whldl 11 freely anilable onllnt to anyoa1, anywhutl I terms of ebooks. ,..baokOG'IIIl!uleii~R..-..cl~~hldenliftc~d#le EuropwtCOSTidonisoeo5EcanQTti'AT~~COST~ wt'K:tiiUIIII'omOclot.'200710~2011 . ~UI*flln:Jm..aund20EIIf!liiUII counriM,IMIIC*oiEoorOlW-to*"-iopll!fdglc~andhlnklgnetwork.mong keyp« JAN I FEB 20 13 ONLINE SEARCHER 73